Museum’s celebrated director is retiring

Pahl credited with facility’s successes

OCEANSIDE  After leading the Oceanside Museum of Art through a dozen years of growth, including the opening last year of a $6 million wing that quadrupled the facility’s size and dramatically expanded its programming possibilities, director James “Skip” Pahl has announced his retirement.

Pahl said this week that he will remain until the museum’s board of directors finds his replacement, which is expected to be by early summer. Then he has plans to get back to some projects that have been put on hold for too long.

“I’m looking forward to completing a 20-foot wooden boat I’ve been building for 10 years, doing some art and volunteering in the community,” Pahl said.

Carolyn Mickelson, vice president of the museum’s board of directors, credited Pahl’s innovative efforts with establishing a museum that transformed the Oceanside arts scene.

“He’s an amazing person,” Mickelson said. “Through his leadership, we’ve been able to create a really exceptional art museum that is eclectic, cutting edge and something you might not expect in this city. The museum is very well respected and Skip has had a lot to do with that.”

Pahl, 66, was hired in 1997 as the museum’s first employee. He presided over its debut as a full-time arts venue in a former city hall building at 704 Pier View Way that was designed by architect Irving Gill in 1934.

Over the years Pahl established the museum as an inventive arts center that hosted concerts, explored the area’s diverse cultures, expanded programming to draw a wider age group and contributed to the redevelopment of downtown Oceanside, Mickelson said.

Pahl will leave the museum with six full-time employees, 80 volunteers, a $700,000 annual operating budget and no debt, having completed a fundraising drive that paid for the 16,000-square-foot addition that opened in March 2008.

The elegantly understated two-story building designed by architect Fred Fisher was awarded a 2008 Orchid from the nonprofit San Diego Architectural Foundation.

The board of directors celebrated being debt-free with a ceremonial burning of the last construction bill at a Dec. 16 holiday party.

“A great highlight was making that final payment,” Pahl said.

Board member Carl Fredericks said one of the reasons he decided to become a trustee two years ago was because Pahl impressed him.

“I met Skip, who I found to be very charming and very dedicated. He’s built a strong, loyal team,” Fredericks said. “He’s one of those people who’s creative and also fiscally oriented. That’s very unusual, particularly in the art world.”

Pahl was instrumental in securing two, three-year $300,000 grants from the James Irvine Foundation for programming to expand and diversify its audience, Fredericks said.

Some of the funds have been used to create Art After Dark arts and entertainment events geared to 20-somethings, free Family Art Days that encourage children and parents to create art together and a Culinary Cinema Series pairing food-themed movies with gourmet dinners.

“In the last year, we’ve seen a much younger audience” because of the programming, Pahl said.

Other notable shows include an unprecedented 2006 exhibition of Great Depression-era works by 47 San Diego artists; a photography installation and runway show on the art and history of tattoos in 2008; and a yearlong joint city-museum celebration of the arts and culture of Samoa in 2000 that garnered an award from the League of California Cities.

Before coming to Oceanside, Pahl was head of exhibits at the Museum of Man in Balboa Park, deputy director of the Mingei Museum in San Diego and director of the Children’s Museum in downtown San Diego. He worked as a deputy director of the state Museum of New Mexico in the 1980s.

Pahl said he is leaving the Oceanside museum at a good time, as it plans for more expansion.

In the next three or four years the museum is slated to move into a neighboring firehouse the city intends to vacate.

The new building will increase the museum’s size from about 21,000 square feet to 32,000 square feet and provide room for a school of art, an auditorium, offices and storage space.

For the next few months, Pahl said he will work at the museum by day and spend off-hours stitching the last two sails for the yawl he hopes to put in the water this spring.